


Heart's a Mess

by lovetincture



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 2021 US Attempted Coup, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Current Events, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28643268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: “What the shit.”Steve and Tony watch the news.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 40





	Heart's a Mess

**Author's Note:**

> Fuck fascism and fuck Nazis too.

“What the shit.”

Tony doesn’t usually watch the news. She doesn’t need to, not with JARVIS set up to scan the internet and present her with a digest with her morning coffee (they’d workshopped the order of that; it turns out that Tony Stark is incrementally less likely to lose her everloving shit if she has some caffeine in her before taking on the morons of the day.) But _this—_

“What the _shit._ Cap? Cap! Hey, everyone. Avengers assemble,” she hollers down the hallway.

Cap is the first one to show up—benefits of super-hearing and all that. “Tony, what’s up—” She glances at the news. “What the fuck?”

_“I know.”_

Tony’s sat right in the middle of the couch and doesn’t move a muscle when Steve plops down heavily beside her. Neither of their eyes leave the screen.

“It’s a fucking insurrection.”

“I can’t—” Steve shakes her head. “Shouldn’t someone do something about this? Should _we_ do something about this?”

“The President has refused to call in the National Guard or the Avengers.”

“Fuck.”

“I need a fucking drink,” Tony says. She still doesn’t make a move to get off the couch.

Steve swears again and doesn’t tell Tony that it’s too early to drink, so that’s about how Steve’s doing.

* * *

It’s a lost day, in the end. _Should we do something about this_ gets bandied about before they decide that no, probably taking aggressive action against US citizens against presidential orders will not help matters. They're excessive force by definition, and it's not like making martyrs is going to help anything. That doesn’t mean they have to _like_ it, though.

There’s a mountain of snacks piled high on the coffee table in various states of destruction. A bag of tortilla chips leans against Tony’s right hip, and she may not have Captain America’s metabolism, but she sure is making a fucking go of it right now.

“Ridiculous,” she snarls for probably the dozenth time that day.

Steve is quiet, and Tony glances down. Steve’s been her rage buddy all day, even after the others had wandered off. Thor doesn’t understand the nuances of American politics (or potentially any politics that don’t involve immortal gods and beheadings) and Natasha has gone… _somewhere._ Tony decides not to think about that one too hard.

Steve’s got her legs sprawled over the arms of the couch, her head in Tony’s lap, and she’s scrolling through Twitter. She’s probably not going to come up for air for a while.

“Earth to Steve?”

Nothing.

“Should never have gotten you into Twitter,” Tony grumbles.

“I heard that,” Steve says without taking her eyes off the screen.

Tony snorts and pokes at her. “Then how about moving over? Your supersoldier ass weighs a ton, and my leg is starting to fall asleep.”

Steve smirks and actually grinds her head in _more,_ lighting up the pins and needles in Tony’s leg that were totally not a joke. “But I’m comfortable here.”

“God, you’re such a brat. Do the American people know you’re a brat? Seems like an oversight.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“People like their billionaires a little bratty. It makes for clickable headlines, what can I say?” Tony is only half paying attention to their conversation at this point, same as Steve. She shoves a hand through her hair. It feels sticky and ratty. She hadn’t managed to take a shower before she got sucked in down the news vortex, and she thinks she’s probably starting to smell. “Can’t reach my phone from here,” she says, registering one last complaint.

“You’re not missing anything,” Steve says. She shoves the phone in Tony’s face anyway. “Look, the cops just fucking let them in.”

Tony raises an eyebrow, pushing the phone far enough away so she can see the screen without going cross-eyed. Sure enough, there are the Capitol Hill police moving aside a flimsy barricade so the rioters can amble in, two by two. It’s like fascist Noah’s ark. “Are we surprised that there’s police corruption? Surely you had that in the ‘30s.”

Steve scowls, taking the phone back. “It was the middle of the Depression. Of course we did. It’s just—” She huffs, and for a minute she sounds so put-upon that Tony actually feels genuinely bad. “You want things to be better, you know? So many things are better now, they really are. It’s just—frustrating how many more things are the same.”

“I know,” Tony says. “I mean, I don’t know. Not at all, but I can imagine.” She sinks a hand in Steve’s hair, annoyingly blonde and somehow never brassy.

It’s a little dry, and Tony thinks she can do better than that—there was that one compound she’d discovered accidentally while trying to make a better lubricant for the suit’s hydraulic system. Might be able to repurpose it as a conditioner if she tried, maybe something in a coconut. Steve doesn’t seem to go in for the floral stuff.

Steve makes a happy noise and butts her head more insistently into Tony’s hand, and it stops the spiral of thoughts, pulling Tony’s balloon string firmly back into the present. Tony obliges, scratching her short nails against Steve’s scalp so that she sighs. Within a few minutes, Steve’s eyes have closed, and she’s let the Starkphone sag against her chest, and really, Tony is going to take this one as a win.

“Anyway,” Tony says, quiet in case Steve is sleeping. “I don’t _know,_ but I know you care. I’m sure it sucks to see the thing you love so much turn out rotten to the core.”

The words hang in the air. Tony thinks she might have gotten the better end of it. She's never _loved_ her country, not the way Steve has. Sometimes she's amazed that Steve can still feel it. Can still believe, after everything. She doesn't know if she envies or hates that belief, sometimes.

“‘s not all bad,” Steve murmurs, still with her eyes closed. She fumbles up with her hand, finding the free hand Tony’s got curled in her lap with uncanny accuracy and threading their fingers together. “I’ve got you, don’t I?”

It’s not at all a question, but Tony treats it like one anyway. She leans forward, hunching her back and ignoring the way her spine screams at her—one of them is buffed up with supersoldier serum and the other most decidedly is not—and brushes a kiss against Steve’s lips. Her mechanical heart flutters a little at the curving arc of Steve’s answering smile.

“Sure you do, Cap. Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture) and a little on [Tumblr](http://lovetincture.tumblr.com).


End file.
